Service to honour 183 Sunderland children who died in Victoria Hall disaster in stampede for toys

It’s 140 years this year since the children were crushed to death in a stampede for toys at the old Victoria Hall, which once stood in Toward Road.

This Friday, June 16, at 11am, Sunderland Old Township Heritage Society (SOTHS) will gather at the Victoria Hall memorial, as they do every year, to make sure the children are never forgotten.

On a fateful day on June 16, 1883, Victoria Hall hosted a children’s entertainment show which hundreds of local children attended.

At the end of the show, an announcement was made that children with certain numbered tickets would get a prize. Worried about missing out, many of the estimated 1,100 children in the gallery stampeded toward the staircase leading downstairs.

At the bottom of the staircase, the door opened inward and had been bolted so as to leave a gap only wide enough for one child to pass at a time. Those at the front became trapped and were crushed to death by the weight of the crowd.

When theatre staff realised what was happening, they tried to force the door from the other side, but it was impossible. The sheer weight of the children stuck behind it meant it would not budge.

As news of the incident spread through the town, parents rushed to the hall to look for their children.

But of those children who were at the bottom of the stairwell, 183 died at the scene or shortly afterwards from asphyxia.

It was an horrific accident which wiped out a generation of children in the then town, with some families losing two or more children. At the time, Queen Victoria sent a message of condolence to the grieving families and contributed to a disaster fund, which was used to help build the memorial in Mowbray Park.

The tragedy became national and international headline news. Over the following week, all the children were buried in local cemeteries and a fund was set up to ensure that none of the children would be buried in a pauper’s grave.

The devastating incident led to safety measures which are still in place today.

Following the tragedy, a Sunderland trainee architect, Robert Alexander Briggs, patented the new push bar release that we see on fire exits now and the accident prompted the passing of legislation to provide doors which opened outwards at all places of public entertainment.

It remains the worst incident of its kind in British history. The Victoria Hall remained in use until 1941 when it was destroyed by a German parachute bomb.

:: SOTHS service of remembrance for the children will be held on Friday 16th June at 11am in Mowbray Park and all are welcome to attend and pay their respects.

The service will be followed with an exhibition at Sunderland Minster by local artist Lynn Killeen of hand painted jars. The jars were decorated as part of a community project and each one bears the name of one of the children who died in the calamity. The jars will be lit up and will be on display from 11.30am until 2pm.